Questionable rites of passage

The death last week of a student at Jadavpur University in Kolkata has brought back to the fore the menace of campus lynchings that we stupidly continue to call ‘ragging’. The misrepresentation of this widespread form of social bullying as just some initiation rite taken too far is at the root of the problem. Also, there is a tendency to see this as just a campus problem, not something conflating to a society-wide phenomenon of abuse stemming from various kinds of stratification practised in India, be it of caste, class, gender, sexuality or religion. As a society, India’s privileged classes instinctually barricade other vast sections of people and set up hurdles in the form of elaborate rites of passage that block any possibility of the entry-seeker ever attaining the same status as them. ‘Ragging’ is just another form of exclusion.

An 18-year-old from Nadia district, Swapnadeep Kundu joined the Jadavpur campus on August 6 to earn a degree in Bengali. Barely three days later, he ended up in a pool of blood, having jumped or thrown from the third floor of his hostel. Police inquiries have revealed that he telephoned his mother to plead to be taken back home as he was being subjected to intense bullying in his hostel. Police have arrested a former student who continued to live in the hostel despite having no good reason to be there. Two other senior students are also in police custody as emerging details indicate systematic humiliation of freshman students, ranging from forced haircuts, body shaming and enslavement to homophobic insults.

That this incident happened just a few days before the University Grants Commission (UGC) kicked off its annual Anti-Ragging Week is perhaps superficially ironic. That it happened just a few days after a postgraduate student committed suicide, allegedly after campus bullying, in her room at IIT Hyderabad is of course a coincidence. However, these unrelated facts do offer some insights: One is that UGC’s token observances have not translated into any real sensitisation of students against cruelty to fellow students.

Another is that there seems to be a recurring typology of victims of this sort of social violence. The Jadavpur University boy was from a rural district trying to get a degree from a university famed for its liberal arts programmes. The girl who took her life at IIT Hyderabad came from a Scheduled Caste family from rural Odisha. Back in March, we had the suicide of a Dalit student at IIT Bombay, apparently after caste humiliation by fellow students. Four years ago, we had the sensational suicide of a woman doctor, hailing from the Bhil tribe, at the BYL Nair Hospital in Mumbai, allegedly after caste harassment and professional demotion by three colleague doctors.

In all these cases, the victims were from subaltern sections, trying to make a way for themselves in the proverbial city while being displaced at several levels from their native social situation. The doors to this new world they seek are minded by privileged people with much greater social capital and an ease of western manners that can be intimidating. To be subjected to the so-called rites of passage at these portals is nothing but a form of access control. No wonder that they ask to see your NEET scores at these places.